Movie Review What Men Want One of 2019's Worst

Under the old Hollywood studio system of the 1930's through the 1950’s it wasn’t uncommon that some executive would get a clever premise in their head, assign it to a contracted writer to be turned into a screenplay before turning it over to a contracted director to bring it to life with contracted actors, none of whom could care less about what they were making, they were just happy to be in Hollywood making movies.

We don’t hear about many of those little programmers as they were once dubbed. They’ve been lost to time mostly because they were slapdash affairs made under the gun of the Hollywood system and without the actual drive and inspiration of an artist at the helm. Not all programmers were bad, some transcended such as Casablanca which director dashed off with barely a thought. Curtiz was already making another movie before Casablanca had even finished editing.

But, for every Casablanca that outgrew its origins on its own merit, there were 20 or so programmers that came and went and have never been heard from since. All of this was going through my mind as I suffered my way through What Men Want, a comedy that is basically little more than a premise teased out into feature film length because it happens to have origins as a slightly familiar I.P. It's a movie destined to be forgotten by time.

What Men Want is a 2019 remake of a Mel Gibson programmer about a guy who gets bonked on the head and can suddenly hear what women are thinking. The supposed reinvention here is that the gender is flipped. The tremendously talented Taraji P Henson wastes her comic gifts in What men Want as a female sports agent who feels she is being held back because she can’t crack the boys club at her firm.

Like Gibson in the original, Henson’s character, Ali, gets bonked on the head and now she can hear men’s thoughts. This leads to a series of lame gags in which men are either sexist pigs or gay stereotypes. Ali is up for a promotion at work and doesn’t get it, passed over for it in favor of a lesser man, Ethan, played by Jason Jones. Her boss, Nick (Brian Bosworth) gives her a better luck next time pep talk and quickly moves on.

Despite losing the promotion, Ali decides that she will use her new gift of mind reading to land a big new client. Jamal Barry (Shane Paul McGhie) is believed to be the next number one overall pick in the NBA draft and he doesn’t have an agent yet. Instead, he has a dad, Joe ‘Dolla’ Barry (Tracy Morgan), who is extremely protective of his son and meal ticket. Joe appears ready to go with the agent that can get him the most money while, Jamal appears humble and just wants to play ball.

The other side of the plot is a romantic subplot. Ali meets a nice single father named Will (Aldis Hodge) and via her new mind reading gift, Ali determines that he may be the one truly kind and thoughtful man on the planet. That doesn’t stop her from reading his mind and trying to manipulate him, something he’s able to see through as the plot requires for them to be together and then separate for the traditional third act resolution.

There is nothing remotely surprising or innovative about What Men Want. A small child, if asked, could likely predict the jokes that come from this premise. What Men Want runs like a machine pressing out the same, predictable gags over and over again without fail. Worse yet, they are many of the same variations on the jokes we’ve already heard in the original, Mel Gibson version, of this trite and forgettable premise.

The over-familiarity is something that could be forgiven if the performances in What Men Want were better. Unfortunately, the wildly talented Taraji P Henson appears comfortable mugging her way through these familiar gags and keeping her genuine talent and charisma under wraps as much as possible. She’s too good an actress to be embarrassed by this lame, formula, material but she certainly does not shine in this performance.

The supporting cast also dull their own wits for their roles in What Men Want. Max Greenfield from TV’s New Girl is flat, Aldis Hodge from TV’s Leverage can barely muster the energy to deliver his forgettable straight man set ups and Tracy Morgan, an always energetic presence, is muzzled here in a tragically failed attempt at satirizing real life basketball dad and controversy magnet Lavar Ball.

What Men Want does have a professional sheen to it. The film is machine tooled and manufactured as if it were a durable good and not a movie intended to entertain people. Director Adam Shankman makes everything in What Men Want just passably professional enough that you don’t feel second hand embarrassment for the cast and crew that wasted their time and effort making this movie. It had to have looked possible for this movie to be good at some point in order to justify everyone’s involvement.

What Men Want is a bad movie, not because it is specifically poorly made or performed. Rather, it is bad for its sheer mundane existence. The movie is a little more than a premise willed Frankenstein-like into existence, made up of parts of other, equally forgettable, comedies and held together by the notion that audiences are eager to experience this premise again. Like the programmers of old, What Men Want is the product of factory film-making, heartless, soulless and containing just enough quality as to not fall completely to pieces. Mundane to mind-numbing degree.